I'm new to Win32 perl scripting. Could someone tell me which DBI driver I should use to connect to SQL Server 2000? Would it be DBI::ODBC or is there a specific driver for SQL Server? Are there different connection methods than via the DBI?

Any tips on working with this setup would also be appreciated.

>> If you can't control it, improve it, correlate it or disseminate it with PERL, it doesn't exist!

Generally speaking, using DBD::ODBC will be a good choice to deal with MS SQL Server. The module is lighter and faster. Also it's cross platform, meaning it doesn't matter where is your script runs as long as the ODBC is setup.

Another choice is Win32::ODBC module which comes with ActiveState's ActivePerl. It provides rich set of ODBC functions, probably more than you need.

The third option is to use DBD::Sybase or sybperl. The Sybase and MSSQL share the same database protocol, Tabular Data Stream (TDS). If you decide to use it, you will also download the FreeTDS library from www.freetds.org. In this case, you have also need to use cygwin's perl instead of ActivePerl.